In the last few build I have been getting polypainting projections errors on older 3DCoat files using the paintbrush.Symmetry is enabled. If I turn symmetry off there are no paint projection errors.The Airbrush is not effected.Does not matter what shader you are using.

Models started in the new versions seem not to be affected by this type of error but I will have to test deeper when I get back in town late next week plus test the linux version as well.If you do not discover the cause, I will send you the file when I get back in town...

Picture shows the type of errors in the paint projection on the model...

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Emissive channel is in this implementation monochromatic - it underlines that color on some places emits light. In so way any color may emit even if chanel itself is monochromatic. I think this sort of emissive is very enough, I don't think there should be non-monochromatic emissive.

Hi Andrew,

Just FYI, emission almost always has a colour associated with it, so monochome is better than nothing but ultimately not really production usable. With this implementation, obviously someone could paint their diffuse channel the colours they want then paint the emission channel but IMO this is a somewhat clumsy workflow. Most people just want to paint a coloured emission map and be done with it

Just FYI, emission almost always has a colour associated with it, so monochome is better than nothing but ultimately not really production usable. With this implementation, obviously someone could paint their diffuse channel the colours they want then paint the emission channel but IMO this is a somewhat clumsy workflow. Most people just want to paint a coloured emission map and be done with it

Cheers,

Peter B

What is actual difference? Is it possible in real situation that diffuse and emissive colors are diffetent on the same place?In general what you are exporting is colored emissive but principally it is monochromatic.In general I may do it in different way - export not color + emissive in alpha but color from emissive layers + emissive in alpha.

In the last few build I have been getting polypainting projections errors on older 3DCoat files using the paintbrush.Symmetry is enabled. If I turn symmetry off there are no paint projection errors.The Airbrush is not effected.Does not matter what shader you are using.

Models started in the new versions seem not to be affected by this type of error but I will have to test deeper when I get back in town late next week plus test the linux version as well.If you do not discover the cause, I will send you the file when I get back in town...

Picture shows the type of errors in the paint projection on the model...

Please explain a bit - what is "paint projection". How to reproduce problem?

What is actual difference? Is it possible in real situation that diffuse and emissive colors are diffetent on the same place?In general what you are exporting is colored emissive but principally it is monochromatic.In general I may do it in different way - export not color + emissive in alpha but color from emissive layers + emissive in alpha.

In my work with games, emissive has always been a monochromatic channel that is applied multiplied against the albedo channel. That being said, perhaps people doing nonrealtime rendering work have different needs. I believe in Softimage, emissive is treated as RGB and can contribute to scene lighting so I suppose it might make sense to provide that as an option.

My first impression was that I was surprised there isn't a new glowy sphere up in the menu next to the black specular sphere for the new emissive channel. I kind of expected it to behave the same way as specular does today (and if you added RGB emissive in the future, make it behave like - but independently from - Color). For example, I thought this build would probably have a new option in the "add new material" dialog where you currently pick the depth, color and specular texture to pick the emissive texture. I'm also unsure how or if the emissive channel can be used with the various layer modes (lighten, color dodge, etc) to create the emissive texture - right now it seems like I'll probably be limited to raw color painting? Not sure. I'm not a 3DC expert either so maybe I'm missing something there.

My first test in the Paint room didn't work so well unfortunately - I set a layer as emissive, painted some white on it, and tried to turn the lights off. The lights only go down to 10% apparently, which is a problem for looking at the full spectrum of emissive behavior. Also, the emissive channel didn't seem to actually act emissive. I know you mentioned shaders need work, so maybe that's what is going on here. The attached file shows my test with the lights as low as they go with white paint in a layer set to emissive.

Regarding "export not color + emissive in alpha but color from emissive layers + emissive in alpha. " - I just did a quick test and saw the options in the export. I think the current option of "Export emissive" replacing the transparency is probably not such a great idea and I think emissive should always be in it's own export file. People who need to pack things into channels can use custom pipeline tools for that rather than changing the standard expectation of the color image alpha channel being used to represent transparency; otherwise we'll have to start tracking which exports use what channel configurations and will generally be a source of confusion. If the emissive data is authored as monochromatic, export a monochromatic as the specular is today. If you decide to support RGB emissive (which is how it kind of appears in 3DC right now..?), then the export would be an RGB image. (If you decide someday to add RGB to specular you could do the same thing for that too). I suggest making "Export emissive RGB" control creation of an RGB file "model_emissive_rgb.png" with emissive colors (which would currently be color channel * emissive scalar), and use "Export emissive intensity" to control generation of an A8 image file "model_emissive.png" that has the emissive scalar value. These two could be independent. Or you could make a combo box for "Don't export emissive", "Export emissive RGB", "Export emissive intensity".

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Please explain a bit - what is "paint projection". How to reproduce problem?

Sorry, all I meant was when you paint on the voxel model (surface mode) using the paintbrush in the paintroom that you get the error you see in the picture. I just used the word projection for the applying of the paint.I had no time to post a bug report but when I get back in town late next week, I will send you the 3DCoat file and make a bug report...

I also think emissive should have its own sphere up next to specular and its own dedicated texture.
I also do not think it makes sense to seperate specular color into a blending mode. Why not enable us to paint specularity with colors activated? When you do not want color you simply paint black and white,
and if you do you choose a color. Workflow wise this is much more intuitive and user friendly.

Right now the emissive stuff is neat to play with, but I'm not sure how to practically make it suit my needs. I was of the assumption that that I could import a greyscale map and the white would make an area emissive (so the underlying color would be emissive) while black would be completely non-emissive. Do that now just makes my model black/white. How do I vary the intensity of the light?

Glad it's in as I can find a use for it somewhere for certain, but for production purposes I can't really do anything with it just yet.

Right now the emissive stuff is neat to play with, but I'm not sure how to practically make it suit my needs. I was of the assumption that that I could import a greyscale map and the white would make an area emissive (so the underlying color would be emissive) while black would be completely non-emissive. Do that now just makes my model black/white. How do I vary the intensity of the light?

Glad it's in as I can find a use for it somewhere for certain, but for production purposes I can't really do anything with it just yet.

Now I really need feedback regarding emissive to understand how is to do it better.My limitation is - I can't add additional color channel - slowdown + video memory consumption.

I may do additional blend mode - "Mono emissive" that will use Color_Intensity*Alpha as emissive degree. It will solve b/w import problem.

I need some example how it looks on picture (to make better shader) - but it is hard to do glow due to performance and internal architecture problems.

Now I really need feedback regarding emissive to understand how is to do it better.My limitation is - I can't add additional color channel - slowdown + video memory consumption.

I may do additional blend mode - "Mono emissive" that will use Color_Intensity*Alpha as emissive degree. It will solve b/w import problem.

I need some example how it looks on picture (to make better shader) - but it is hard to do glow due to performance and internal architecture problems.

In an ideal situation, 3DC would allow the user to decide how the two channels (currently the color RGBA and specular A8) would contribute to the final shader output. Adding a more flexible channel system to 3DC is in my admittedly non-expert opinion the #1 most important thing that could be added to improve the capabilities of 3DC. I think the functionality can be improved to support multiple channel types without adding more color channels by changing the way the current color channel data is processed.

Because of how the layers menu shows toggles for "use as emissive", "Normal map", etc., this suggests each layer can can control how it contributes to the final shader textures. Maybe all we really need is a more intuitive way to control what the color RGBA channel is being used for, and what the specular A8 channel is being used for. Essentially, think of those existing channels as simple RGBA and Mono channels, and let the user decide how those channels are used in the output. No new channel data would be needed, just a change in the way the channel data is accumulated into textures used by the shader for display. Consider this:

If the layers had buttons for controlling how it contributes to the shader, this would be much more intuitive. The buttons could be mutually exclusive based on where the data was coming from. For instance, a if mono emissive were being used on a layer, it would disable the specular/reflect/gloss if those channels were set to Mono mode. In other words, clicking on emissive would put an X on the specular, reflection and gloss and the layer would no longer affect specular, reflection or gloss - only one at a time. Each of the types (albedo,specular, emissive, reflection, gloss - ASERG) could be set by the user via menu to use either the RGBA channel or the Mono channel and would affect the mutual exclusion logic accordingly.

The one special case is transparency, which I feel should always be the A channel of the RGBA data to control overall contribution of the layer for a given texel regardless of the configuration of the channels.

Going out on a limb here to speculate how rendering on screen might work, the 3DC would internally have an RGBA texture for each of the channels (ASERG) that is eventually sent to the GPU for rendering. As it scans the layers to update the textures, it would use the button settings on each layer to determine which one of the ASERG texture buffers to accumulate color into, applying the layer mode (standard blend/color burn/etc) to the color data in the process. If a layer were set to mono, it would use the mono intensity for the RGB compnent values. The alpha component would always be set to the layer opacity. The HLSL shader would be provided one texture for each ASERG and render the final result accordingly. Users could even point the scene to a custom shader to tweak it if they wanted.

I am looking forward to seeing how you decide to go with all this, thanks for reading!

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This setup outlined by Eric would be great. It seem like things are getting complicated by using layer modes to set some channel types, and having others applied directly to layers.

A perhaps more flexible approach is to enable custom channels on shaders, so the choice of channel types is based on production requirements, not hardcoded. This is the approach that Mari uses, but would require a different shader setup.

Either way, this program is truly amazing ...and also a big thanks to Sergii for getting it running on Federa 14.

Just downloaded and installed 3.7.08B and I notice that the PicMat_RedWax shader is a lot different and the resolution of my sculpt seems less-than. I reverted back to 3.7.01B (the version that I was using yesterday and started the sculpt in) as these changed aspects really throw me off in mid-stream while in production.

No time to get used to a whole new RedWax look dealing with production day-to-day, and I preferred the the previous RedWax look as well.

I agree, Erics solution is great. I hope it can be implemented this way.
Right now it's a bit confusing having these options between the layer blend modes.
Getting them out of the layer blend modes adds more options, especially blending them like color channels.
Additionally what I'd love to have is layer groups like in photoshop. So we could blend several layers inside the group and then set the whole group to be for example color, specular or emissive.